


ways of going home

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Coulson is great at emotional support, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Romance, Skye loves Coulson A LOT, Skye | Daisy Johnson-centric, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 06:39:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4818941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is one place she always comes back to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ways of going home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts), [RowboatCop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/gifts).



When her first Welcome Wagon that goes wrong goes wrong enough that there it is, that same self-hating black pit at the bottom of her stomach throbs like it did when she was thirteen, Coulson sits with her on the Quinjet and repeats a movement from a lifetime ago. Her hand is still warm when the plane ramp opens and they're in the base again.

The first time a _really_ bad joke about his hand she meant as supportive slips out of her mouth the world becomes very still for a moment until the air breaks with his unfamiliar laughter, "I was wondering who was going to be _the first_ to go there," and she is kind of glad it was her.

It's the morning they disagree on how to deal with a potential gifted and she challenges him in front of the team and he doesn't pull rank but twists his face and keeps quiet, which is worse, and when they are both in the back of the tactical van and she adjusts her gloves Coulson gives her a slow nod and touches the small of her back for second, because they both know they could never part on an angry note right before one of them faces danger, and that knowledge is all she needs to make it back safe.

It's also the morning she opens the door to his office for the mission debrief, after over a month away, on the road, and he says her name and the last month comes back to her: the late night conversations, Coulson letting her talk about the movie she was watching on the motel tv, going over next day's itinerary with her, listening to her complaints about food, transportation and her inability to help out as much as she wanted, and all the inside jokes over the weeks, Coulson's familiar voice made unfamiliar filtered by thousands of miles between them and the motel's bad reception, yet still comforting, still dear.

In the bar of a hotel in Ankara, after May and Mack have left for their rooms, ordering a scotch for the ice more than the drink, the cold pressed to the humming of energy under her sore palms, burning after the day's mission, burning after her abilities were pushed to their limits, too exhausted to move away from the bar stool, too much adrenaline to think about going to bed even though it's the luxurious unusual softness of a hotel bed and fine-thread hotel bathrobes waiting for her upstairs. Coulson orders another round – with lots of ice, he instructs the waiter – though he has to be up early and it's suddenly three in the morning and they are the only guests left in the whole room, the only two people left in the whole world.

The odd, foreign feeling when Coulson's robot hand gets totalled in a fight with a nasty Hydra squad and Fitz will take some days to fix it. It's been so long and Coulson's not used to the _absence_ , and she watches him as he struggles to remember tricks, patterns of self-reliance, as he struggles to remember patience. Her desire to help him, make him forget about it, tie the knot of his tie for him, punish whoever did this, comfort him, _all at once_ , it's not a bad feeling, just too rich and thick for her to swallow right now.

His face, all lit up like a kid's on Christmas, when Lincoln puts his hand over their glasses of Kahlúa to make them flaming cocktails, when the plane breaks down and leaves the three of them stranded in New Mexico, the way Coulson tears his glance from the fire and tells Lincoln "you're amazing" and something heavy lifts from her heart at the knowledge that this man will never think about what she is as anything less than a miracle.

"Make this one last," Coulson says with a grin, in the good quiet times, like Simmons' birthday, both of them perched over the pinball machine, practicing their best juvenile delinquent impressions to make the other smile, Coulson handing her the coin as if Billy didn't have the machine rigged, like calling last rounds, and she doesn't really want the night to end, doesn't want to leave the spot with him watching her so intently, his cheeks slightly pink from the beer and the heat of human proximity, sleeves rolled up, pouting when she finally beats his score, that's one of the ways, too.

When she is singled out as a traitor by her own people, some kind of half-breed, she finds a hot dinner and company waiting for her back at the base. Coulson complains about " _doing what I can_ " with Billy's lack of finesse for choosing food supplies and he rants on about the intricacies of making a turkey sandwich for her, revealing secret recipes, knowing she's not paying attention, and it's all nice background noise while she eats in silence until she feels full and whole again.

The marks on his face and arms after Ward finishes with him – or rather, the way Coulson lets her run her fingers over tender flesh, open or bruised, while she drops her head in shame. Thinking she should have saved him. Coulson telling her she did.

A visit to her old orphanage, while her old neighbourhood makes the nation's front pages, how much smaller it seems from where she stands now, when she pulls Coulson along the back alley, her fingers into his wet jacket –it's raining, which helps settle the memory afterwards– and shows him the fire escape, rails rust-covered and as dangerous back then, the one she used to slip away and into the city when she was a kid, and this, too, was home, but _this is home now_ she thinks as her hand twists into the front of his shirt.

Very late one night, the night of a long day where she starts to realize which way the wind is blowing, when she starts to realize the toll on the team if she stays, when she begins to intimate the words on the lips of generals and journalists, the ones they won't say just yet but maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Very late in his office when she makes her first (and last) offer to walk away and his interrupted "Don't ever–" sounds soft but she can see his fingers making a painful fist.

The cute, little insecure smile after she comes back from meeting the Avengers –not all of them, some of them, well, _two_ , but that is impressive in itself, isn't it– like he is at risk of losing her to the wider world, like he is at risk of losing her at all.

That time when the comms go down as she is under enemy fire and the look on his face when the team finally extracts her and Coulson is leading them, and she says "Thank you, sir" when he helps her to her feet and _the look on his face_ and suddenly all doubts are gone and she understands.

The tentative tantalizing first kiss, that feels like swimming, like the ache in your lungs after diving, like remembering your own name, like that time as a kid when she held a bird in her hands.

Waking up next to someone for the first time in years.

The way the air changes when everyone else leaves a room and they are alone again; entering rooms with him, too, the first time he takes her to his quarters – bigger than hers, she protests about the power of hierarchy and he takes her seriously, promises to look into it – and the first time she finds him waiting for her after a training session at six in the morning and they break protocol, the safehouse he clears for a whole weekend, the night he lists all the beautiful places he's ever been to before he met her and how he'd want to take her there if they had the time, all the while she thinks hearing the list is much better.

Even when he's not there and her room smells of him; even when she is away and her clothes still remember; even when they are apart and she doesn't ever feel alone anymore, anyway; even when she is tired and in pain and terrified and she always finds a reason to come back.

She didn't know it was her last visit to her father. Coulson knowing, afterwards, that nothing he could do (not even promises of finding out who did it) would help, trying anyway. Two weeks later, when he comes back from a trip without her, and she knows which gravestone he was visiting and why. Not asking him about it. Mourning their fathers together when they are finally ready to.

"Well, _I_ 'm proud," he says, crossing his arms and flashing a smile she knows is an exaggeration, when the pundit on the screen questions the ability or the judgement of a Director of SHIELD who lets " _one of them_ " get " _so close_ " to him.

The sex. The tiny moments when it really matters it's him and not anyone else here with her. When old shadows cross her mind and his patience makes a difference. When it's bad and he still kisses her neck, her breasts afterwards and they try again. When it's good and his mouth won't stop to let her catch her breath after the first orgasm, when his fingers won't stop after the second. When she clasps her fingers over his wrists, holding him down. When she draws his left arm across her flushed chest as she comes down, on purpose, just to feel its comforting metal touch. When he still worries about the mundane meaningless numerality of years and his body recoils in doubt. The sex. When she could stay hours straddling his lap and looking at him look at her with that glance, like it really matters to him, that it's her and not anyone else here with him.

The news call her a “menace” while the word “registration” pours from every mouth like she knew it would, that's when Coulson's fingers become tender tendrils of warmth travelling accross her back as sunlight would on lazy summer afternoons, his hands slowly undoing the tension between her shoulderblades, his hands undoing all the evil in the world for her.

Matching scars (his, outside; hers, inside; same place).

They don't officially call it a war, and she has never been in a war, but a war must feel like this. There's a lot of laughter in the middle of a war, that surprises her. A lot of friends, a lot of generosity. A lot of impulsive decisions she knows she will never regret. "In the middle of _all_ this? Really?" Coulson asks when she does something she always mocked when she saw it in movies: she pulls the drawstring out from her favorite hoodie –the gray one under which cover she is able to still avoid the shouts of "Quake!", said either in awe or fear– and she laughs all the way as she wraps it around his finger, pretending it's a ring. And why not? she figures, "Before they make Human/Inhuman marriages illegal," she tells him. The way he doesn't need an excuse or a war to say yes.

When all that is over, and yet the fight never is, and coming back to the ordinary version of the fight is peppered by other ordinary things. Things she never imagined, things he had given up on. A flat bought with the money she got from an inherited empty building in Milwaukee. Not big, not somewhere fashionable, not elegant. Probably not going to be able to spend much time there, anyway, and she learned not to mistake place-ness with _home_ -ness (but poor Phillip, he gets attached to things). A place over the hallway table where she puts her Hula girl, and one of the remaining _nineteen_ Polish spy wristwatches, the one she managed to track down for him.

He falls asleep as she drives them back in Lola on route to the new base, his face catching moolight the whole time. The way he stirs awake when he feels the car stop and she gets to say "we're home".


End file.
